Myth: Yandex outages silenced Russian troll bots. The traffic drop was mostly Yandex's own search crawlers. Troll farms run on proxies and Western clouds and are still active ahead of elections.

A viral chart showing Russian "bot traffic" collapsing after Ukrainian drones hit Yandex data centers was misread, according to the author: the drop was mostly Yandex's own search crawlers, not info-ops social media accounts. Troll farms operate behind proxies, hijacked devices and Western clouds, and remain active, as do hired influencers. The author calls the "bots went silent" narrative misinformation and dangerous, arguing it suggests the threat has ended while influence operations continue ahead of elections, when complacency may be counted on.

✨ AI summary of the linked source — not editorial content.